Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

TSIIGEHTCHIC/ARCTIC RED RIVER
Four employees in Tsiigehtchic are being celebrated for preventing an emergency water shortage.

In November, the community went without water for about week due to a power outage, said municipal foreman Davey Lennie.

Lennie said the problem began when the community's power plant failed.

The battery for the backup generator had also stopped working at the water plant, leaving it without power.

Lennie said problems became even worse after power was restored.

"When the power came back on, it gave a surge to the computer and fried a few things in the computer," he said. "So we had to put the water plant on manual."

The plant has been operated manually ever since, which means staff must go to the building each morning to fill the town's water truck then turn the plant off at night.

"We are still running it manually," Lennie said. "We're turning it off at night until we get some parts."

Senior administrative officer Marjorie Dobson said she is proud of Lennie and the three other hamlet employees who made sure households are not going without water.

Lennie, water plant manager Herbert Andre, electrician John Drost and computer technician Shawn Norbert worked together to override the computer system and operate the water plant by hand.

"It was a big burden lifted from our shoulders," Dobson said. "We had been without potable water for an extended period of time.

"They pooled their different skills and started to produce water."

Lennie said without the plant, water would have to be chlorinated inside one of the community's two water trucks and delivered to homes.

"That would be very time consuming," he said.

Lennie said the plant's computer is still being worked on. As of press deadline, it was not known how long it would take for repairs to be completed.

Lennie said he credited fellow staff members for acting as a team to come up with a temporary solution.

"We all talked about it together," he said. "We managed to come up with some plans, we tried our plans, and it started working."

Lennie said it is the first time the plant, which is about eight years old, has had any major problems.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.